


Space Odyssey

by naboru



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naboru/pseuds/naboru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blast Off enjoys the peace and solitude of space, but everyone else seems to want to ruin it for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Space Odyssey

**Title:** Space Odyssey  
 **Warnings:** gen  
 **Continuity:** G1  
 **Characters:** Blast Off (Blitzwing, Dead End, Skywarp, Soundwave, Thundercracker, Vortex, Wildrider)  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Summary:** Blast Off enjoys the peace and solitude of space, but everyone else seems to want to ruin it for him.  
 **Disclaimer:** Sadly, I own nothing.  
 **Beta:** [ultharkitty](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty)

Note: And, spotlight on… *dun dun dun*: Blast Off! Ta-dah!

“Talking”  
‘Comm-link’

\---

 **Space Odyssey**

 

Blitzwing sat in the co-pilot’s seat, and alternately wrung his hands or put them on his knees and shifted fretfully.

“You don’t say much, do you?”

The question sounded like an accusation, but Blast Off didn’t care. He considered replying, and scrapped the idea. He hadn’t spoken more than ten words since he and Blitzwing went into space, so the answer should be obvious.

“Hey, I asked you something!”

For some mechs, though, it was not.

“No. I don’t.” He didn’t add ‘you should already know’; he had no wish to start an argument.

“Astrotrain talks while he flies…” Another accusation, and again he tried to ignore it.

The triple changer hadn’t been available when the order for this mission was issued, and Blast Off was the only one left who could fly through space.

Maybe the two triple changers could work together, but he was only irritated by the obnoxious, loud mech.

“I’m not Astrotrain.” Blast Off finally said, only to regret his words a moment later.

Blitzwing jumped of his seat, expression angry, and his voice nauseating in its volume. “Yeah, the slaggin ‘bots beat him to scrap!” Two powerful hands slammed on Blast Off’s control console, sending pain over his sensor net. He bit back a snarl.

“When I get my hands on those damn Autobot brothers…!” Clenching his fist, Blitzwing gesticulated to the front window, before he turned around.

“Did you see them?” The triple changer yelled in rage. He punched in the air twice, and continued striding through the deck.

“I don’t care when they attack the seeker trine. Starscream deserves it!” Blitzwing muttered, and Blast Off was surprised to hear that another mech couldn’t stand the Decepticon’s SIC.

“But they slaggin’ scrapped Astrotrain! In the next battle they’re so dead!”

Again Blitzwing punched in the air, just once, the second strike hit the cockpit wall. A low rumble of Blast Off’s engines echoed through his cargo bay and reached the flight deck.

The triple changer stopped, seemingly feeling faintly uneasy as he stared out of the window.

“Sit down.” Blast Off’s tone was unexpectedly indifferent. But he was as indifferent about his fellow Decepticon shuttle as he was about the Autobots who beat him. He never had any problems with the brothers, but he decided it was best not to mention it.

The journey would be long enough without riling Blitzwing’s temper.

\---

Soundwave sat silently in the co-pilot’s seat.

Blast Off had no idea what the communication officer was doing, and he certainly wouldn’t ask. He tried to enjoy the silence. No one spoke and no one touched anything, and besides the pressure he felt from the weight on the seat, he could pretend no one was even there.

Only he couldn’t.

There was a difference between “silence” and “Soundwave-silence”; although it was nothing which could be described.

When Soundwave remained silent, you were automatically cautious what you thought, even if you knew he wasn’t in your processor.

When Soundwave remained silent, your own thoughts became louder, and that was something Blast Off didn’t like.

With A hurricane of thoughts in his head, the unbearable silence of the nothingness outside, and the dangerous silence inside his deck, the journey seemed to stretch into an eternity.

Blast Off docked onto the satellite Soundwave wanted to explore: newly built, high-tech by human standards and apparently capable of blocking human airwaves for Decepticon technology.

When the communication officer left his cargo hold, he began to relax. Though the exploration didn’t take long, certainly not long enough to ease the tension completely from Blast Off’s joints, and it took him all his will not to hurry on their way back.

For once, he looked forward to the intense heat which built up while re-entering the atmosphere.

\---

Wildrider did not sit in the co-pilot’s seat, but paced restlessly through the flight deck.

For a moment Blast Off dallied with the idea of disabling the interior gravitation mechanism, but thought it was probably better to keep the antsy Stunticon on the floor. His actions were annoying enough without added weightlessness and the freedom to move everywhere.

“Are we nearly there yet?”

Suppressing a sigh, Blast Off answered shortly: “No.”

“So, when _will_ we get there?”

Not soon enough, he thought, but kept silent.

“You’re driving me _crazy_! C’mon, you can’t just say nothing. It’s too quiet here! Do you have radio?” Wildrider looked into one of his cameras, seemingly already on the edge of desperation.

Another tempting idea flashed over Blast Off’s processor to open his airlock doors and to throw the Stunticon out into the vacuum of space. But like the first impulse, the thought vanished without further actions or even a threat. The consequences would be too troublesome.

“Can’t you… you know, fly faster or something?”

This time, a sigh sounded through the inner speakers. “I’m flying as fast as I can…”

Wildrider tilted his head, looking through Blast Off’s front windows, while leaning over the control console. His voice sounded disbelievingly as he spoke: “Really? But it doesn’t look like in the movies. The stars and such, shouldn’t they… you know, look like in the movies? Like light rays or something?”

“Unfortunately, this is not a movie. I’m flying as fast as I am able to,” he repeated, keeping his anger out of his tone. Had this mech never been in space before?

“…in the movies they fly at multiple light speed…” Wildrider said, like he could change reality with this statement.

“That is impossible.”

“Why?”

If he had been in root-mode, Blast Off would have clenched his fists. Talking to Wildrider was like talking to a retard.

“Flying at light speed is impossible. The stress and output an air or space craft can endure is limited. And even if a build was able to do so, in the end there would still be the problem of the speed of light. No material object could go faster than this.”

“But what do space bridges do? When I go through them I see stars like in the movies. I’m travelling at light speed then, right?”

Blast Off’s airlock doors twitched. “No. Space bridges generate a curvature of space… It’s different.” The feeling that the topic wasn’t settled with this rose, and he regretted that he hadn’t kept his volcaliser shut from the beginning.

“What’s a curvature of space? How does it work?” The curiosity with which it was spoken, made Blast Off guess that this question wouldn’t be easy to ignore; nonetheless, he tried.

The silence lasted only a few astroseconds, before his private comm. pinged.

‘Do you have TV?’ Dead End asked. The other Stunticon sat on one of the rear seats in his flight deck, and until this point, had been easy to overlook.

‘I can try.’

‘I’d appreciate it. For both our sakes.’

Blast Off recalibrated his communication systems and tried to get a signal strong enough for an almost clear audio and visual.

“Hey, what’s in there?” Wildrider said, tapping on a box which lay on the side of his deck. The other question was seemingly forgotten.

Blast Off didn’t answer, but switched one of his monitors on; it showed a human TV program. The quality wasn’t as good as Blast Off wished it to be, but it caught Wildrider’s attention.

“Yeah! Was about time! How many programs d’you get?” With fast movements, Wildrider sat in the co-pilot’s seat and stared at the screen.

“The picture isn’t that good. Hey, couldn’t you try to make it better or something?”

Blast Off didn’t try. He only kept the resolution clear enough to distract the Stunticon. With the TV, Wildrider was still noisy, but at least he had stopped pacing around and touching things.

His private comm-link opened again. This time only for a single word: ‘Thanks.’

He didn’t replay, but it was his sentiment exactly.

\---

Thundercracker sat in the co-pilot’s seat, quietly reading from a datapad, deep in thought. The seeker had laid his feet on the control console, apparently without any malicious intentions. Blast Off disliked it anyway.

Initially he’d wanted to mention it, that the flyer should keep his feet off his compartments, but he’d decided against it. The flight had been pleasant so far; no noise or forced conversation, and a silence he could tolerate, so he said nothing.

Time flew by, until Blast Off activated his speakers.

“We’ll arrive in about 6.75 breems.” Despite his calm voice, he seemed to surprise Thundercracker, since the seeker all but jumped out of the seat. He hadn’t meant to startle him.

“Uh…uh, yeah, Thanks…” Thundercracker stammered an answer, and pulled his feet from the console with a movement that could be interpreted as panic. Carefully, he looked at the spot where his feet had laid, a guilty expression rushing over his faceplates.

Neither of them apologised.

They fell quiet again for a breem, before Thundercracker broke the silence with a chuckle, although it didn’t sound particularly amused.

Blast Off didn’t asked for an explanation, but he got one anyway.

“ _He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster_.” The seeker smirked. “Interesting thought…”

He didn’t know what could be an appropriate response to that. Was it a test? Everyone knew that Thundercracker didn’t agree with all of Megatron’s orders, and that he sometimes had difficulties believing in the cause. He was usually not as stupid as Starscream and didn’t elaborate his opinion openly, though.

“What are you reading?”

Blast Off hadn’t wanted to express that thought, but it already had left his speakers and hung in the air.

Thundercracker raised his helm, meeting the camera with his optics, and appeared to be as insecure as Blast Off.

“That’s… uhm, some writing from a human guy; called Nietzsche… Not everything humans write or produce is utter crap.”

The last part sounded like an apology and a justification in equal part.

“The next line is this: ‘ _And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you._ ’ Sounds pretty heavy, doesn’t it?” Again there was this not-really-honest chuckle, which Blast Off didn’t know how to read.

He didn’t comment on the quote, but the words stuck in his processor.

He was ‘gazing into an abyss’. The void around him was only punctuated with distant masses of matter, which were stars or planets, but this aside, only emptiness. Everywhere.

Suddenly, he stopped in his thoughts, as though not wanting to prove the human right.

\---

No one sat in the co-pilot’s seat, indeed no one was there.

Blast Off was alone in Earth’s orbit, drifting weightless over the atmosphere and observing the planet. He had been here for several weeks already, and he knew he would stay for about the same time.

His comm-link crackled with static, and it took a moment until the first spoken word reached him. He already knew who to expect. Every three days, sometimes more often, he got a call from the base, the purpose of which wasn’t to transmit new orders or status reports.

‘Hey big guy. How’s the weather up there?’ Vortex’s voice was full of gleeful laughter.

There is no weather, idiot, Blast Off thought, but didn’t response.

‘You won’t believe what I did last night!’ More crackling followed. It didn’t matter whether Blast Off wanted to know or not. It was Vortex talking to him, so he was going to find out, and there were only very few things Blast Off wouldn’t believe.

‘Me and Thrust won the whole stock of Swindle’s high grade! Haha! You should’ve seen his face!’

That statement explained the glee, but it was not what Blast Off had expected.

‘Wait, I’ll send you the video. I recorded it, gimme a klik.’

Blast Off received an incoming request and although he didn’t answer, he accepted the file.

Under him, he saw clouds floating, becoming a thunderstorm; it was quite an interesting view.

‘If you’re gonna ask nicely, I might keep a cube for you…’ The spitefulness was replaced by something seductive, which Blast Off knew all to well, and it made sure he wouldn’t ask.

‘I bet Swindle will…’ Vortex couldn’t finish his sentence, as Blast Off heard a door sliding open and an argument quickly followed.

‘Get outta here, ‘copter!’

‘Ah, Warpy, back already? That was a quick quickie. Seems like Thundercracker’s _qualities_ got worse, eh?’

‘What the… Shut up! And get away from…’

‘….eheheh, so hot tempered today?’

‘You fraggi’ aft-head. You’re not…’

The comm. went dead, and all was silent again.

Even when Blast Off was alone in space, he was not completely alone. He had yet to decide if it was a good or a bad thing.

Reluctantly, he opened the video file, and laughed.


End file.
